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Kia ora,

 

Thank you for your request for official information. The Ministry's
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As required under the Official Information Act 1982, the Ministry will
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Due to the COVID-19 global pandemic response, the Ministry is experiencing
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Ngā mihi

 

OIA Services

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------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: S Hill <[3][FYI request #18755 email]>
Sent: Wednesday, 2 March 2022 21:05
To: OIA Requests <[4][email address]>
Subject: Official Information request - Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine - Changes
to DNA

 

Dear Ministry of Health,

Does the Ministry of Health, and the Director General of Health stand by
their statement that "The vaccine does not affect your DNA" in light of
emerging studies proving otherwise?

[5]https://www.health.govt.nz/covid-19-nove...

Study:
[6]https://scanmail.trustwave.com/?c=15517&...

Yours faithfully,

S Hill

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Kia ora 

 

Thank you for your request under the Official Information Act 1982 (the
Act) to the Ministry of Health (the Ministry) on 11 March 2022 for: 

 

“Does the Ministry of Health, and the Director General of Health stand by
their statement that "The vaccine does not affect your DNA" in light of
emerging studies proving otherwise?

[1]https://www.health.govt.nz/covid-19-nove...

Study: [2]https://www.mdpi.com/1467-3045/44/3/73/h...

 

While the Act enables people to request official information from the
Ministry, it only applies to information it holds. There is no obligation
to create information or compile information it does not hold in order to
respond to requests, nor is the Ministry obliged to provide or prove an
opinion. The Act does not support requests in which a requester quotes
information and then seeks some form of comment on it, couched as a
request for official information. 

 

However, as it is in the public interest to clarify the findings of this
paper, please note the following. This paper attempts to show that
treatment with the Pfizer vaccine (BNT162b2) results in the production of
LINE-1, a reverse transcriptase. This is not evidence of the vaccine
entering the nucleus and altering DNA. This paper shows an elevated
transcript (RNA) level of BNT162b2 (Figure 2) and LINE-1 (Figure 3) via
poorly designed qPCR experiments which do not [3]meet accepted standards
for this type of experiment. Importantly, [4]elevated transcript bears no
relationship to elevated protein levels. This paper then attempts to show
the elevated protein in Figure 4 (via immunohistochemistry) and Figure 5
(via western blot), but neither of these experiments has been properly
controlled. Figure 4 shows that LINE-1 is localised to the cytoplasm of
the cell (not the nucleus where it must be to act as a reverse
transcriptase), while Figure 5 shows a faint band that appears larger than
the [5]expected size of 42 kDa. 

 

In addition, this paper is fundamentally flawed as it uses Huh7 cells
lines for all its experiments, which are a [6]liver cancer cell line and
bear very little resemblance to normal human cells. 

  

Furthermore: 

* The cell lines used in this paper are immortal Huh7 cells and bear
very little resemblance to a ‘healthy’ in vivo cell found in humans.
The copying mechanisms (and genome stability functions) in these cell
lines are highly irregular, they often overexpress many proteins
(including LINEs) and do often not have the proof reading functions of
normal cells.  
* There is residual reverse transcriptase activity in human cells via
LINEs, i.e., eukaryotic genomes do encode for enzymes with the ability
to convert RNA to DNA (see [7]here), however this is likely a very
uncommon activity for a healthy cell. While there is a theoretical
basis for the conversion of RNA to DNA, there is no practical example
of this process occurring naturally in human cells available to date.
Given all the RNA that humans are exposed to, there is no reason to
single out vaccine RNA as a potential threat.  
* Running RT-qPCR experiments on a small fragment is problematic on many
levels, as RT-qPCR is susceptible to contamination, so it is difficult
to rule out that what the researchers are seeing in this paper are
artefacts. Previous debates on this topic also indicate that any
observed human/viral chimeras are likely artefacts when making
sequencing libraries (see [8]here). 
* The references cited are for the most part single case reports of
clinical entities in vaccine recipients and one of the sole credible
references (Barda et al NEJM 2021; 385: 1078-1090) is misrepresented
as demonstrating that arrythmia, deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary
embolus, myocardial infarction occur in Pfizer recipients. However,
the methodology of that paper was to compare occurrence in vaccine
recipients and non-recipients in the same time period, overall
demonstrating no excess of these events in vaccine recipient. This
suggests a starting bias with respect to literature review. 

The paper is published in an MDPI journal, a publishing house that has a
reputation as a predatory publisher, with highly questionable editorial
and peer review processes. 

In summary, this paper bears little to no weight in showing reverse
transcription of Pfizer mRNA in human cells. It is a poorly executed study
that is lacking in internal critique of the cell lines, and the used of
poorly controlled experiments and a lack of subsequent experiments that
are required to disprove the null hypothesis. There has been debate about
this topic since early 2021, however, nobody has presented robust genomic
evidence for reverse transcription of RNA and DNA integration into human
genomes thus far, and other studies suggesting this have been conclusively
rebutted: [9]www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8379926/,
[10]www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8316065/ and
[11]www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8274596/. 

Taking the above into consideration, the Ministry stands by the statement
that the vaccine does not affect your DNA. The Ministry will continue to
monitor further information as it becomes available. 

Under section 28(3) of the Act, you have the right to ask the Ombudsman to
review any decisions made under this request. The Ombudsman may be
contacted by email at: [12][email address] or by calling 0800
802 602. 

Ngâ mihi

 

OIA Services Team

 

[13]Ministry of Health information releases

[14]Unite against COVID-19

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References

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1. https://www.health.govt.nz/covid-19-nove...
2. https://www.mdpi.com/1467-3045/44/3/73/htm
3. https://academic.oup.com/clinchem/articl...
4. https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(16)30270-7.pdf
5. https://www.merckmillipore.com/NZ/en/pro...
6. https://web.expasy.org/cellosaurus/CVCL_...
7. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.11...
8. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/...
9. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/article...
10. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/article...
11. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/article...
12. mailto:[email address]
13. https://www.health.govt.nz/about-ministr...
14. https://covid19.govt.nz/

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